Monday, February 29, 2016

The announcement of the intentional release, one of the largest in years, marks one of a handful of times in recent history city officials have notified the public when heavy rain forced them to discharge wastewater from two pipes that flow directly into the Jones Falls, said David Flores, the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper, who works for the watchdog group Blue Water Baltimore.

A December report by a Washington-based advocacy group, the Environmental Integrity Project, faulted the city for dumping 330 million gallons of wastewater into the harbor over five years and failing to disclose the contamination.

Friday's announcement came a day after city public works officials said 200,000 gallons of wastewater made their way into the Patapsco River and Inner Harbor after overflowing from manholes and from the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Facility. Those releases were not intentional.

Jeffrey Raymond, a spokesman for the city Department of Public Works, said officials decided to announce the contamination after receiving several inquiries about it since Wednesday.

Their records should be online and immediately available. The dirty little secret is that Maryland and EPA are slow rolling cleaning up Baltimore and other big cities because that is where the votes are, and the voters in Baltimore would rather have 12,000 farmers pay to clean up the Bay than the 800,000 people in Baltimore County.

Current and former intelligence officials say it is standard practice to suspend a clearance pending the outcome of an investigation. Yet in the case of Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State Department, two letters indicate this practice is not being followed -- even as the Clinton email system remains the subject of an FBI investigation.

Breitbart News reported Saturday that Clinton, under pressure amid an environmental crisis in parts of New York State, spearheaded a letter to the EPA and also introduced a bill in 2007 called The TCE Reduction Act, which aimed to set new environmental standards for use of the industrial solvent Trichloroethylene (TCE).

But the bill never went anywhere. Two months after the bill was introduced, Dow Chemical, the nation’s largest TCE producer, joined the Clinton Global Initiative and ended up giving money to the Initiative and also a private advisory firm linked to Bill Clinton.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Walleye Pete called this morning as I was getting into the shower to ask if I would like to go check out the fishing at "Location X" with him. Of course I said yes. We about 4:30 and were down in a few minutes catching fish

Although the air temperature at home was nearly 60 when I left, the wind off the water was pretty darn chilly, and I was glad for the float coat and gloves.

Glenn Kessler, Washington Post's Fact Checker Spinner, takes on Clinton's claim that George Bush tried to privatize Social Security, and awards three out of four possible Pinocchios. Using my usual bias correction of adding two for articles about democrats, and subtracting two from stories about Republicans results in five out of a possible four. Sounds about right.

Maybe it’s a coincidence that #WhichHillary and #NeverTrump arose with a few days of each other, but something about these hashtags reminds me of the “last exit for x miles” sign you sometimes see before a long, barren stretch of highway. The time to change the direction the parties are headed hasn’t run out yet but with Super Tuesday approaching it’s definitely getting closer. For the moment, both parties are struggling to choose between a less-ideologically pure front-runner (Trump and Clinton) and a candidate (Sanders) or candidates (Cruz and Rubio) who has a track record more in step with the party’s core beliefs but who seems less electable.

Totally anecdotal, but I’ve noticed that no matter how many times I visit wattsupwiththat.com, Google Now never puts anything from that site into my “stories to read.” Contrast that to I once clicked on a story about Taylor Swift because my daughter is a huge fan and now she is in my feed constantly. Also, Salon, Slate and Huffpo are always there in abundance even though I never click them.
Also notably absent despite multiple daily visits: theothermccain.

I would like to remind visitors to read this scary article on how Google and Facebook may be, and almost certainly are, affecting our politics and the next election: The new mind control.

Fear and Loathing in the Information Age, so to speak. The whole world has gone crazy, I’m the subject of international news, and Google is conspiring to keep people from reading my blog. This makes perfect sense in 2016, you see, that someone like me would become a First Amendment cause célèbre, a 21st-century Dreyfuss. Was this my career goal when I was a long-haired rock-and-roll freak circa 1983? Of course not. Nobody could ever possibly plan anything as crazy as my life, even if they wanted to, which no sane person ever would. So while the #FreeStacy hashtag campaign continues, I have had some communications with leading legal minds who have become interested in the free-speech issues involved. I’m not the litigious sort, you understand, but some of my lawyer friends are the type who would be happy to go to federal court to seek an emergency restraining order first thing Monday morning, if I just gave the word. But that’s not how I roll. My correspondence with Bert the Samoan Lawyer was just two old college buddies talking. Here’s what I replied:

Well, my Samoan friend, did you ever think back in the day that my gonzo methods would have such consequences as this? As I told my kids, “Congratulations, your Dad is a hashtag.” Of course, the #FreeStacy hashtag won’t autocomplete — although the bogus misspelled version does. No “e” in Stacy, as you know, and “blah blah girl’s name blah blah,” said every idiot who wanted to start a fight on the elementary school playground. When the going gets weird, the weirdos get me banned from Twitter.
Do I want to describe my experiences with Google? Not in writing. The NSA and DHS will have to monitor my phone calls if they want that information. Nixon was a piker compared to these Obama goons, and I’ll bet you $20 Sidney Blumenthal has Jack Dorsey on speed-dial.
Face it, Bert, we live in an Age of Fear and, as a concerned father myself, I have to warn you that Taylor Swift is down for The Agenda. Every feminist on Tumblr is certain that Taylor is dating lesbian supermodel Karlie Kloss. As a Neutral Objective Journalist, of course, I’d have to see video proof before I’d believe that bizarre rumor, but if Cara Delevingne can be gay, everybody is gay, and in 2016, any self-respecting feminist would be embarrassed to admit she is heterosexual. These young fellows can’t get their mojo working and, therefore, phallocentric domination is in a steep decline. Oh, what wonderful jargon! But I digress . . .

Hold on a minute. Taylor Swift is a lesbian? Maybe? Well, there sure a lot of photos with Taylor and Karlie together; not that there's anything wrong with that. It looks like they could wear the same clothes.

If your daughter is a Taylor Swift fan, you may need to intervene, Bert. A sort of “tough love” approach is recommended. Seize her laptop and cellphone and demand passwords for every app she’s got. And if she’s on Tumblr? Bad news, pal — no grandkids for you. Tumblr might as well be called the Crazy Cat Lady Training Academy. Every teenage girl on Tumblr has a mental illness (anxiety, depression, PTSD) and is either a pansexual genderqueer or a nonbinary lesbian. Dye your hair green, pierce your nose, get more tattoos than a sailor and tell your Mom that your pronouns are “xe” and “xer.” This is what it means to be a feminist in 2016, a dystopian nightmare meets pornographic fantasy. If Orwell were writing “1984” now, it would begin: “Dear Penthouse Forum …”

The discovery of the Bronze Age wheel will help scientists get a better idea of how our ancestors got around.

The wheel is the oldest, largest and most complete wheel ever found in Britain, according to Cambridge University. It reveals a number of intriguing facts about Bronze Age technology, writes Rossella Lorenzi for Discovery.

Scientists say that the wooden wheel dates from 1100-800 BC, and was found at a dig site that has been described as Britain’s Pompeii. The site, which is found in the county of Cambridgeshire, was called home by a number of families who built their circular houses on stilts above a river.

A dramatic fire caused the inhabitants to flee around 3,000 years ago, and the buildings fell into the river where they were preserved by silt and clay. The wheel is among a number of items preserved by nature.

That's a shame, but not exactly a Pompeii.

It measures around three feet in diameter and was found close to the remains of the largest house. Scientists say that is is very well-preserved and is constructed of five panels of solid timber fixed together, with a reinforced hub in the middle.

The team of researchers were at first confused by the discovery, because the wheel was found in marshy land near a river on which people navigated using boats. In 2011 the team uncovered 8 canoes of different sizes at the site.

Were they short little guys, with hairy feet?

“The discovery of the wheel demonstrates that the inhabitants of this watery landscape had links to the dry land beyond the river,” David Gibson, Archaeological Manager at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Division of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, said in a statement.

So they had a cart, or chariot for when they needed to go across land? I'm not really that surprised.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

OSU chemist Mas Subramanian and his team were experimenting with new materials that could be used in electronics applications and they mixed manganese oxide – which is black in color – with other chemicals and heated them in a furnace to nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. One of their samples turned out to be a vivid blue. Oregon State graduate student Andrew Smith initially made these samples to study their electrical properties.

The new pigment is formed by a unique crystal structure that allows the manganese ions to absorb red and green wavelengths of light, while only reflecting blue. The vibrant blue is so durable, and its compounds are so stable – even in oil and water – that the color does not fade.

These characteristics make the new pigment versatile for a variety of commercial products. Used in paints, for example, they can help keep buildings cool by reflecting infrared light. Better yet, Subramanian said, none of the pigment’s ingredients are toxic.

OSU has reached an exclusive licensing agreement for the pigment, which is known as “YInMn” blue, with The Shepherd Color Company. It will be used in a wide range of coatings and plastics.

I would have suggested "Benny's Blue" after the school mascot, Benny the Beaver.

It's kind of cool that scientists can still find something new and useful by mixing a few chemicals and baking them in an oven.

. . . a former Marine and Iraq veteran sends a heartfelt and somewhat prescient email to Secretary Clinton after meeting with her and discussing the U.S troop withdrawal.

“America has a habit of leaving these types of places and turning our backs on our allies,” Zachary Iscol wrote. “We’ve lost a lot of blood and treasure in Iraq in the last 8 years and many of the relationships developed by military and state personnel were hard won. Those groups are now incredibly fearful that we will abandon them to the Shi’a majority and Iran’s will.

“And as we divest ourselves of direct military engagement throughout the world it is even more important to send a message that the [U.S.] does not abandon those who throw in their lot with us….”

1. Neera Tanden, a frequent emailer with Clinton, had her account hacked by a Filipino counterfeit pharmaceutical company. This email underscores how unsecure a private server like the one Clinton used can be. This is especially true in light of the fact that we have already know Clinton was the target of similar hacking.

2. Wendy Sherman thanked Clinton for making her confirmation as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs happen. As Sherman was one of the key negotiators of the Iran nuclear deal, this is another example of Clinton’s responsibility for the awful deal the Obama administration struck with Iran. This email is also a good reminder of Ed Henry’s recent story that Wendy Sherman once bragged about Clinton sending “sensitive information on unclassified systems.”

3. Back when Clinton actually supported trade, Jake Sullivan forward Clinton positive talking points on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including the fact that it was the State Department’s “strong determination to complete the agreement.” In fact just months after Sullivan sent Clinton these talking points, Clinton claimed that completing the trade deal would be “one of our great projects in this century.”

4. Clinton’s flawed approached to technological security is highlighted in the email below. In it she tells Sullivan that she is “fighting w the security technology.” Sullivan then proceeded to mock Clinton’s lack of technological prowess by putting technology in scare quotes.

5. Clinton also received an email from then-Senator John Kerry. This email’s release coming in the same week that Secretary Kerry claimed that he had “no knowledge” that Clinton had a private email, makes that claim look ridiculous.

"I think that she's isolated. I don't think she's... a victim — playing this female part — I don't think she is. She's been connected to power for a very long time, and when she was on the board of Walmart for 9 years, she did nothing to raise that wage or stand by women and all the things she could have done. And I think that her name recognition is helping her quite a bit in the South, but I don't think that she's been there, like Sanders has, getting arrested, all through his life standing up for rights...."

This week's Rule 5 spectacular celebrates Erica Durance, of Smallville, Hope and the House of the Dead.

Erica Durance; born June 21, 1978) is a Canadian actress, producer, and director. She is best known for her television roles, portraying Lois Lane on the CW series Smallville, and as Dr. Alex Reid on the medical drama series Saving Hope.

Durance was born in Calgary to parents Gail and Joel Durance, and was raised on a turkey farm with her older brother and sister in Three Hills, Alberta, Canada . . .After graduating from high school, in 1999, Durance moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, to pursue her interest in acting professionally. "I wanted to get my feet wet in a smaller area than Los Angeles when I gave it a try,"
. . .
FHM magazine ranked Durance #38 on FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World" in 2006, and ranked her #20 in 2007, #15 in 2008, and #14 in 2009

People with psychiatric disorders may be likely to marry and have children with other people who also have psychiatric disorders, according to a new study from Sweden.

The study did not examine why people with psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia and depression, may tend to mate with other people with such conditions, and therefore, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon are not clear, said Ashley E. Nordsletten, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral research fellow at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

But one possible reason is that people may simply select partners who share certain traits with them, she told Live Science.
. . .
It turned out that people with psychiatric disorders were more likely to marry and have children with people with either the same disorder as they had or a different psychiatric disorder, than they were to marry and have children with people without psychiatric disorders.

Could it just be that sane people avoid crazy people, leaving them to marry each other? Some questions are just that simple.

Friday, February 26, 2016

It's actually amazing this is being "printed" by the Bay Program; it's an admission against their own usual line of alarmist BA about how rising sea level is going to overwhelm the Bay, but hopefully not before they get their grants renewed.

Climate change is expected to bring a multitude of changes to the Chesapeake Bay region, including a rise in sea levels. As waters rise, marshes and wetlands are predicted to be overcome by water and disappear faster than wetland plants can move to higher ground, meaning a loss of important habitat that traps pollution and provides food and shelter to fish, shellfish and birds.

But the VIMS study suggests that salt marshes—coastal wetlands that are flooded and drained by salt water brought in by tides—may be able to persist through processes that allow the marshes to grow vertically and migrate inland. According to the report, more frequent flooding brings more mud into the salt marsh, raising the soil and encouraging the growth of common marsh plants.

“Predictions of marsh loss appear alarming, but they stem from simple models that don’t simulate the dynamic feedbacks that allow marshes to adapt,” said lead author Matt Kirwan in a release. “Marsh soils actually build much faster as marshes become more flooded.”

It's true, marsh plants grow slower as they get further above the water level (and drier), and faster, up to a point, as the water gets deeper.

The researchers emphasize, however, the importance of allowing salt marshes to migrate inland—and that marshes are unable to migrate into areas blocked by coastal cliffs or hardened shorelines. Nearly 20 percent of the Chesapeake Bay’s shoreline is hardened by riprap, seawalls and other structures.

We've known this for years. Scientists have been collecting sediment cores tens of meters long, showing salt marsh vegetation all the way to the bottom. It doesn't take a genius to understand what that implies. While there was some question of the ability of salt marsh to keep up with rapid sea level rise, remember, there is no evidence for accelerated sea level rise in the last 100 years:

It's certainly true that paved or otherwise fixed surfaces can't rise with rising waters; a road in our community built on sinking fill and close to the Bay is, not surprisingly, flooded more often than when it was first laid down in the 1930s.

Drinking more coffee might help reduce the kind of liver damage that’s associated with overindulging in food and alcohol, a review of existing studies suggests.

Researchers analyzed data from nine previously published studies with a total of more than 430,000 participants and found that drinking two additional cups of coffee a day was linked to a 44% lower risk of developing liver cirrhosis.

“Cirrhosis is potentially fatal and there is no cure as such,” said lead study author Dr. Oliver Kennedy of Southampton University in the U.K.

Not that I needed this as an excuse to drink more coffee.

“Therefore, it is significant that the risk of developing cirrhosis may be reduced by consumption of coffee, a cheap, ubiquitous and well-tolerated beverage,” Kennedy added by email.

Cirrhosis kills more than one million people every year worldwide. It can be caused by hepatitis infections, excessive alcohol consumption, immune disorders, and fatty liver disease, which is tied to obesity and diabetes.

Kennedy and colleagues did a pooled analysis of average coffee consumption across earlier studies to see how much adding two additional cups each day might influence the odds of liver disease.

Combined, the studies included 1,990 patients with cirrhosis.

In eight of the nine studies analyzed, increasing coffee consumption by two cups a day was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of cirrhosis.

In all but one study, the risk of cirrhosis continued to decline as daily cups of coffee climbed.

Compared to no coffee consumption, researchers estimated one cup a day was tied to a 22% lower risk of cirrhosis. With two cups, the risk dropped by 43%, while it declined 57% for three cups and 65% with four cups.

Of course, it could just be that people who drink more coffee drink less booze. One would hope they would control for this, but it's certainly not mentioned in the article. You'd be amazed at the simple things scientists overlook in the rush to get stuff published.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed to Congress Wednesday that career Justice Department attorneys are working with FBI agents on the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices and the handling of classified material.

Legal experts say the assignment of career Justice Department attorneys to the case shows the FBI probe has progressed beyond the initial referral, or "matured," giving agents access to the U.S. government’s full investigative tool box, including subpoena power for individuals, business or phone records, as well as witnesses.
. . .
She confirmed that the FBI criminal investigation is ongoing, and no recommendation or referral on possible charges had been made to her.
. . .
“As a general matter, a U.S. attorney is assigned as an FBI investigation progresses. The partnership with the U.S. attorney allows the FBI to use the investigation tools of the U.S. government, including subpoenas for evidence, business or phone records, as well as witnesses. And you need (a) U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury.”

All of the roughly 30,000 personal emails Hillary Clinton claimed to have deleted from her private email server will eventually be reviewed by the government — and many will be made public, according to a top legal adversary of Clinton.

“They’re all going to get reviewed eventually, despite Mrs. Clinton’s resistance,” Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative legal watchdog organization Judicial Watch, said in an interview with The Hill.

Clinton has said she “chose not to keep” roughly half of her server’s email cache because the 30,000 personal emails contained information about “yoga routines,” “family vacations” and “condolence notes.”

We'll see how much of this was yoga rountines and Chelsea's wedding plans, and how much was the Clinton Foundation offering State Dept. services for a price.

A vote for the scandal-plagued Hillary is a resounding ratification of business as usual–the corrupt marriage of big money and machine politics, practiced by the Clintons with the zest of Boss Tweed, the gluttonous czar of New York’s ruthless Tammany Hall in the 1870s. What you also get with Hillary is a confused hawkish interventionism that has already dangerously destabilized North Africa and the Mideast. This is someone who declared her candidacy on April 12, 2015 via an email and slick video and then dragged her feet on making a formal statement of her presidential policies and goals until her pollsters had slapped together a crib list of what would push the right buttons. This isn’t leadership; it’s pandering.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, who’s complained about having “the kitchen sink” thrown at him, unloaded on Hillary Clinton here Thursday night, ticking off a series of issues on which he said the former secretary of state had taken the wrong position.

The Vermont senator attacked Clinton for having accepted campaign contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street interests. And then he sharply criticized her support, as first lady and as a New York senator, of welfare reform, free trade, an anti-gay rights bill and the Iraq War — all measures he opposed during his long career in Congress.

His mother Vera Schedrina said: 'I am absolutely against it. He has got exams, he is studying.

'What do you mean - a month with a porn star?

'This is not real at all, even a week is too much. They should give us 100,000 roubles instead, we'll be happy with it.

Aw, Mom!

Porn actress Ekaterina Makarova - believed to be in her mid 20s - said she had agreed three months ago to be the prize in a competition for the 100,000th visitor to a new website selling virtual arms for computer games.

She has not met Ruslan yet but said 16 was 'a good age to be independent' .

'We discussed it with the organisers earlier that the winner might be underage.

She would discuss with the teenage boy where they would stay for the prize - but she wanted 'to go on holiday somewhere abroad'.

'I will travel to Moscow and then the boy will decide,' she said.

'We will negotiate it with his mother too if he can live in a hotel with me, or fly with me somewhere.
. . .
Asked if the prize meant having sex with the winner, she said: 'It is not supposed, but life is life.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

We’ll take a moment today to note the imminent relocation of a legend of American politics. Younger readers might not even recall the name, but former California state senator Leland Yee is back in the news. Who is Leland Yee? He was an infamous gun control advocate in San Francisco who was running for state Secretary of State a few years back and found himself in severe need of campaign cash. Rather than following the usual path of wheedling dollars out of politically connected cronies with deep pockets, Yee took a much more direct and capitalist approach. He decided to jump into the black market weapons game and try to sell some rocket launchers to foreign interests. (Among other gun running activities.)

That didn’t work out so well for Yee and he was soon arrested. And now, after a long and winding court saga, he’s heading to jail. (L.A. Times)

Wednesday, after decades as an elected officeholder, he was sentenced to five years in prison for doing political favors in exchange for campaign cash — or, as the judge put it — for selling his vote.During an hourlong hearing, Yee implored U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer to be lenient. Standing at a lectern near his lawyers, Yee said he had taken responsibility for his crimes and knew that he had shamed himself and hurt his family, his supporters and others…“It must be that the public has trust in the integrity of the institution, and Mr. Yee, you abused that trust,” Breyer said. “You showed you did not have integrity in your actions.”The five-year sentence was within the term recommended by federal sentencing guidelines. Prosecutors had sought eight years. They said that Yee had received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for favors and that he admitted he knew his actions were illegal.

Yee was certainly one of the more entertaining characters on the American political stage, at least once you got past the dangerous and horrific nature of his crimes. If it weren’t for him the country never would have heard of “Shrimp Boy” Chow, which remains one of the all time great gangster names in the nation’s history. But the former state senator was also a great object lesson in how the Democrats do business and how the media covers them. Even this week, with all the legal formalities concluded, the press couldn’t get Gov. Jerry Brown, Senate leader Kevin de León or most of the rest of the state Democratic leadership to offer so much as a comment on the sentencing. It was just too much of an embarrassment to the party.

Five years sounds a little short. It's not like this was a trivial offense, and the fact that he was running guns to a drug dealer and mob boss seems like sufficient exacerbating circumstances for a longer sentence. I'm sure the prosecutors could have found several more felonies had they shown the kind of imagination that, say, Travis County prosecutors, who charged Gov. Perry of Texas for the heinous felony of exercising his office's right to veto.

Not to mention, hypocrisy factor of a pro gun control democrat participating in illegal arms traffic.

What comes out of the south end of a chicken could cost well north of what poultry companies are able to absorb, industry members told a Maryland legislative panel Tuesday.

Lawmakers are considering a measure that would make the Eastern Shore's five poultry firms, also known as integrators, responsible for the phosphorus-rich waste created by their contract growers.

The bill was the subject of a four-hour hearing Tuesday that pitted western shore legislators and environmentalists against farmers and Eastern Shore legislators.

“This act fails to understand the relationship between integrators and poultry growers," said Dave Patey, director of live operations for Mountaire Farms. The bill, he added, demonstrations that “Maryland is fast becoming an unfriendly state for business including the business of family farming.”

Environmental groups staged a rally before the hearing, featuring a person in a chicken suit and placards with messages such as "We all need CLEAN water."Supporters say it makes sense for poultry companies to deal with excess manure instead of individual farms because they have deeper pockets.

Contract growers wouldn't have to worry about losing the ability sell their manure or use it as fertilizer on their fields, said Sen. Richard Madaleno, D-18-Montgomery, as the bill's sponsor. Only the excess would become poultry companies' property.

Do you think the Washington Post would oppose a bill to force them to buy back "excess" unwanted newsprint at retail prices, and suck up the cost of handling?

U.S. spy agencies have told Congress that Hillary Clinton's home computer server contained some emails that should have been treated as "top secret" because their wording matched sections of some of the government's most highly classified documents, four sources familiar with the agency reports said.

The two reports are the first formal declarations by U.S. spy agencies detailing how they believe Clinton violated government rules when highly classified information in at least 22 email messages passed through her unsecured home server.

The State Department has already acknowledged that the emails contained top secret intelligence, though it says they were not marked that way. It has not previously been clear if the emails contained full classified documents or only some information from them.

The agencies did not find any top secret documents that passed through Clinton's server in their full version, the sources from Congress and the government's executive branch said.
However, the agency reports found some emails included passages that closely tracked or mirrored communications marked "top secret," according to the sources, who all requested anonymity. In some cases, additional classification markings meant access was supposed to be limited to small groups of specially cleared officials.

Under the law and government rules, U.S. officials and contractors may not transmit any classified information - not only documents - outside secure, government-controlled channels. Such information should not be sent even through the government's .gov email network.

The two reports are the first formal declarations by U.S. spy agencies detailing how they believe Clinton violated government rules when highly classified information in at least 22 email messages passed through her unsecured home server.

Hmm, I wonder how those got there. . . Now we need to find out who had their hands on both the original classified versions, and the ones that were scrubbed so they could be sent to Hillary.

Is this is, will this actually prompt the administration to do something serious? Don't count on it:

Loretta Lynch, considered to be on the short list for appointment to the Supreme Court by President Obama, deflected questions about the appointment of a special counsel to look into Hillary's deepening email troubles: Lynch non-committal on Clinton email prosecution

Attorney General Loretta Lynch declined Wednesday to discuss how she would make a decision about whether to prosecute Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over classified information found on her private email server.

However, Lynch did say the investigation and the Justice Department's review of the matter would follow the usual process and procedure for such matters.

"This will be conducted as every other case and we will review all the facts and all the evidence and come to an independent conclusion as to how to best handle it," Lynch said during a House Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday morning.

The issue, at least for now, is the decision process that Lynch describes. The decision to charge will not be made independently, as Lynch claims. Those career attorneys still report up the chain of command to political appointees, including Lynch, who owe their positions to Democrats (which is otherwise not problematic). An independent review would mean having a decision-maker outside of the DoJ review those recommendations and choose whether or not to prosecute Hillary Clinton, her aides, or all of the above.

Sierra Hull was born and raised in Byrdstown, Tennessee and attended Pickett County High School before accepting a Presidential Scholarship to study at the Berklee College of Music.

Hull began playing the mandolin at the age of eight and put out the album Angel Mountain at 10. Hull was soon playing jam sessions with other musicians in her family, and by 2001 she was entering local talent contests. . . At age 11 she was mentored and befriended by Alison Krauss, herself once a child prodigy on the fiddle. Hull and Krauss, along with Dan Tyminski, performed at the White House on November 21, 2011.

Hull received the Bluegrass Star Award, presented by the Bluegrass Heritage Foundation, on Oct. 19, 2013. The award is bestowed upon bluegrass artists who do an exemplary job of advancing traditional bluegrass music and bringing it to new audiences while preserving its character and heritage.

Counties in Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia have filed a friend of the court brief (Amicus Curiae) in the TMDL case between the American Farm Bureau Federation v EPA.

Seventeen county governments in these three states spell out why they oppose EPA’s attempt to control non-point source pollution which migrates into the Chesapeake Bay.
The counties believe EPA is usurping local governments’ traditional authority to make local land-use decisions. They tell the U.S. Supreme Court that EPA is ordering “…States and counties how to allocate their respective shares of those total [pollutant] loads among different point and non-point sources [farms] across different water segments in their jurisdictions.” They also allege the Third Circuit court decision supporting EPA “…authorizes a massive transfer of power from local elected official to an unelected federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.”

The brief provides background on Fauquier County, Virginia. The Fauquier Farm Bureau is one of fifty Virginia farm bureaus. The brief declares Fauquier’s farmers will be uniquely harmed by EPA’s TMDL regulation. EPA “…will require Fauquier County producers to undertake unnecessary and especially costly measures to meet the TMDL’s draconian mandates targeting farmers, and – with respect to the entire Bay – push hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland out of production.”

The brief claims 20% of cropland in the watershed or approximately 600,000 acres will have to be converted to grassland or forest to achieve EPA’s required TMDLs. (Not once is it mentioned in the brief that Section 319 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) provides protection to non-point source dischargers such as farmers.) The brief goes on to describe the U.S. District Court’s opinion in Pennsylvania as authorizing “…nothing short of a federal government take-over of land use decision-making in the 64,000–square mile Chesapeake Bay that is home to 17 million people.”

The counties claim that “States and counties are forced to curtail or even prohibit certain land uses in order to achieve the reductions mandated by… [EPA’s] TMDL.” Further it is alleged EPA will dictate “…which lands may be used for farming or development, which other lands must be ‘retired’ out of productive use…how much fertilizer a farmer may apply to his working lands,…” (This is coming to the Midwest if EPA wins.)

Fine-tuning bad news. Recent statistical analysis finds sea levels are rising faster now than at any time in nearly 3,000 years.

Alex DeMetrick reports that’s not good news for Maryland. Maryland is vulnerable to sea level rise on two fronts: the Atlantic and along the Chesapeake Bay. A new study finds world wide…

“The sea level rise that we saw in the last century was really unprecedented in 2,800 years,” said Dr. Donald Boesch, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

Our knowledge of sea level for the last 2800 years is indirect at best, and badly contaminated with tectonic motions, and And now, here's the truth fresh today from the NOAA sea level records site:

Do you see any hint of change in the rate of sea level rise in the last 100+ years? Here, we can even look at the data with the linear increase taken out:

See any hint of recent acceleration due to global warming? If sea level now is rising faster than any time in the last 3000 years, it's clearly not due to CO2 induced warming, which, according even to global warming proponents, has only become significant since about 1950.

A legal challenge to the Philippines' rules on genetically modified organisms is threatening to spark a food crisis in the country and could cloud the outlook for GM technology around Asia.

Government agencies are scrambling to set new regulations on GMOs by Feb. 23 after the Southeast Asian nation's top court late last year demanded an overhaul of existing rules, halting GM planting and issuance of new GM import permits until that was done.

The Supreme Court was acting on a petition by environmental activists led by Greenpeace, with the move likely to be closely watched by governments elsewhere as the Philippines is seen as a trailblazer for GMO.

The country was the first in the region to allow planting and commercialization of GM corn, which it did in 2002, and has permitted GM crop imports for more than a decade.

And you can see all the harm it's done, right?

Around 70 percent of the Philippines' corn output, which stood at 7.5 million tonnes last year, is GM. The country's top GM import is soybean meal. Both are mainly used as animal feed and any supply disruption could spell disaster for the livestock sector.

The Supreme Court's December ruling is "anti-nationalistic when you look at it from the perspective of the country's food security", said Roger Navarro, president of Philippine Maize Federation.
Corn farmers are worried they might not be able to plant in May.

"The livelihood of almost 1 million farmers nationwide will be threatened," said Romualdo Elvira Jr., a farmer from the northern province of Bicol.

Using non-GM seeds, a hectare yields around 3 tonnes of corn, said Oliver Aldovino, part of a farmer cooperative on the southern island of Mindanao. Aldovino, who switched to GM seven years ago, said output doubled with GM corn.

Sure, go back to growing half as much food; we'll stay in San Francisco drinking Starbucks

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that State Department officials and top aides to Hillary Clinton should be questioned under oath about whether they intentionally thwarted federal open records laws by using or allowing the use of a private email server throughout Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington came in a lawsuit over public records brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group, regarding its May 2013 request for information about the employment arrangement of Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide.

Officials with the State and Justice departments said that they were aware of the order but declined to comment further, citing the ongoing litigation. Discovery orders are not readily appealable. An attorney for Abedin declined to comment.

Sullivan set an April 12 deadline for parties to litigate a detailed investigative plan--subject to court approval--that would reach well beyond the limited and carefully worded explanations of the use of the private server that department and Clinton officials have given.

“There has been a constant drip, drip, drip of declarations. When does it stop?” said Sullivan, a 1994 Bill Clinton appointee who has overseen several politically sensitive FOIA cases. “This case is about the public’s right to know,” he said.

Sullivan also suggested from the bench that he might at some point order the department to subpoena Clinton and Abedin to return all emails related to Clinton’s private account, not just records their camps previously deemed work-related and returned.

"This is one of several lawsuits filed by the same right-wing group, which will stop at nothing in pursuing the Clintons, just as they have done since the 1990s," Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email.

In an interview with the Post, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton cites a report published last month by the Inspector General for the State Department. The IG faulted the Department for long delays in responding to FOIA requests (longer than any other agency) and instances where responsive records seemed to be overlooked by Clinton’s senior staff:

In December 2012, the nonprofit organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a FOIA request to the Department seeking records “sufficient to show the number of email accounts of, or associated with, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the extent to which those email accounts are identifiable as those of or associated with Secretary Clinton.” On May 10, 2013, IPS replied to CREW, stating that “no records responsive to your request were located.” At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the Department, including members of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the Secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business. OIG found evidence that the Secretary’s then-Chief of Staff [Cheryl Mills] was informed of the request at the time it was received and subsequently tasked staff to follow up. However, OIG found no evidence to indicate that any of these senior officials reviewed the search results or approved the response to CREW. OIG also found no evidence that the S/ES, L, and IPS staff involved in responding to requests for information, searching for records, or drafting the response had knowledge of the Secretary’s email usage. Furthermore, it does not appear that S/ES searched any email records, even though the request clearly encompassed emails.

What this paragraph is really saying is that Clinton’s senior staff kept her private server a secret even from people tasked with responding to FOIA requests about her email arrangements. When the Inspector General sent attorneys to speak with Cheryl Mills about her role in this particular incident, she refused to speak with them.

Meanwhile, Trump might sound as though he's committing to prosecute Hillary: "You have no choice... In fairness, you have to look into that... She seems to be guilty... But you know what, I wouldn't even say that. But certainly, it has to be looked at... If a Republican wins, if I'm winning, certainly you will look at that as being fair to anyone else. So unfair to the people that have been prosecuted over the years for doing much less than she did. So she's being protected, but if I win, certainly it's something we're going to look at."

Today, Hillary supporter David Brock published an open letter at his Correct the Record site. The point of the letter is ostensibly to ask Bernie Sanders to tone down his negative advertising against Hillary Clinton.

I’m writing today to urge that you and your campaign immediately halt all negative campaigning against our party’s prospective candidate for the Presidency, Secretary Hillary Clinton.After first pledging to wage a positive campaign for President, you and your campaign have for weeks now engaged in a relentlessly ugly barrage of false character attacks against Mrs. Clinton, including running negative TV advertising of the sort you promised you never would…Your continued suggestions that Mrs. Clinton is untrustworthy and even corrupt – when nothing could be further from the truth – are a threat to our party’s standing, up and down the November ballot.

Attacking Hillary isn’t just politics as usual it’s a threat to the future of the entire Democratic party. Having made clear his desire for Sanders to shut up, Brock turns to his broader purpose, telling Bernie Sanders it’s time for him to fall in line. . .